The California Republican Party has sunk to such lows in terms of political influence that even liberal newspaper editorial pages are bemoaning the party’s irrelevancy. As the San Francisco Chronicle opined recently, “Democrats have an interest in seeing new blood in the old California Republican Party. One-party rule is not good for any government, as San Francisco City Hall repeatedly demonstrates.”

Clearly, it’s in everyone’s interest to see a vibrant two-party system in the largest of the 50 states, which should have a political arena where ideas can at least be debated and where there’s at least some pushback to Democratic policies, which typically involve expanding the size and scope of government.

After the Nov. 6 election, California Democrats gained a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Legislature, meaning that Republicans no longer have the clout even to stop direct tax increases. After voters approved a 2010 initiative requiring only a simple legislative majority to pass budgets, the GOP lost any role in the budgeting process, as Democrats no longer needed to court a handful of Republican votes. That development wasn’t good for anyone.

And Democrats control every state constitutional office. So pundits, on the left and the right, have been eagerly and understandably pondering the future of the once-Grand Old Party in California.

On these pages, we’ve argued that, instead of becoming more liberal – a strategy that rarely gets politicians elected anyway – the GOP needs to embrace a different bundle of issues. It shouldn’t become a “me too” party that stands for nothing distinctive from what the other party is offering, but instead should become more freedom-focused, economically and civilly.

That means embracing a set of principled limited-government ideas across the board. We’ve always found it hypocritical that Republicans would preach smaller government even as they call for a stepped up drug war and government intervention in private matters such as same-sex marriage.

But the fierce internecine debate between GOP moderates and conservatives has mostly been for naught. The moderates haven’t done any better at the ballot box than the conservatives, with the sole exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ascension to the governor’s office in 2003 – and that was a bizarre election unlikely to be repeated.

We might need to accept the simple fact that most California voters have reason not to trust Republicans and that the process of winning them over to a generally right-of-center agenda will take years of painstaking work. That important work begins with an invigorated, freedom-friendly agenda and new leaders committed to principles over politics.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.